Jackson and I returned to Lake Columbia Wednesday intending to duplicate the trip last week. We arrived around 8:30 and started fishing. On the solunar table site that I use, last Wednesday was a four star and Thursday was a three star day. Things turned out just about right according to the stars, with Wednesday being great and Thursday being a little hard. This Wednesday had two stars and Thursday had only one. I was a little apprehensive about what kind of fishing we were going to find. Wednesday was a difficult day with bites hard to come by. We fished with mainly paddle tail swimbaits but resorted to a fluke with a swimming tail and a ragetail shad. The problem was compounded by my case of fishing pox. To start when a fish bit close to the boat, I rared back and set the hook and the line snapped. I had not retied from the last trip. Second my line broke a couple of times Wednesday and when I retied it and tested the knot it broke, bad line. Lucky I had a replacement spool and replaced it that night. Thursday I had two fish to jump and throw the hook and missed a couple of bites when using my swimbait. When I looked at the hook the point had been bent up and was dull. Wednesday was a slow day, meaning you had to retrieve the bait slow to get a bite. Wednesday we tried some of the places where we had luck last week but some new ones too. We found some really good looking spots that were full of lily pads. At the end of the day we caught 13 fish, 12 bass and a grinner, the grinner being the FOD because all the bass were small.

Thursday was the one star day. It was also going to be the windy one with 10 mile per hour winds out of the South forecast. We started on a nondescript bank on the lee side of the lake. It had a shallow slope with the tree stumps that had been cut off low to the ground and not many pads. We started down that bank and soon Jackson had this 5 pound fish.

That was a good start that gave us a little enthusiasm. On this nondescript bank there were some canes that had been placed to mark larger stumps. we tried all of them with no luck. There was one place which was a hump a little off of the bank that had grown some weeds when the water was low. We were casting around it when Jackson threw and when the bait hit, it was hung up. He pulled trying to free the bait and it pulled back. He set the hook and the battle with the fish and one of the small weeds was on. The fish was a big one. When it was in the net there was discussion about the size comparison with the 8-11 he caught last week. He thought it was about the same size and I thought it was larger. Here is the fish:

And here are the scales:

He did it again ! Broke his all time best record after only one week! We continued down the bank until it ran out and we had to go somewhere else . We went to a cove where we had good luck last week. It was almost like you had to take a number and wait your turn. That cove was protected from the wind that had risen enough to become a factor. We tried a cove that we thought was out of the wind but the wind has a way of blowing into a cove that you thought was protected. There was a cove within a cove that the wind was blowing directly into. The fish seemed to be waiting on anything that the wind blew in. Caught one there and had another jump off. We then decided to go back to the nondescript bank because that was the only place we were going to be able to fish because of the wind. Going back down the bank I cured the pox on a long cast by catching a 4 pound fish. The total for the day was only 6 fish but WHAT fish ! We made a great decision to leave about 2:30 because there was no place we could fish effectively because of the wind. We had another great trip to Lake Columbia. So much for only one star.